


I've got a war in my mind

by holograms



Category: Whiplash (2014)
Genre: Anxiety, Drug Use, Dysfunctional Relationships, M/M, Mildly Dubious Consent, Power Dynamics, Slurs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-28
Updated: 2015-03-28
Packaged: 2018-03-19 23:46:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,421
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3628716
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/holograms/pseuds/holograms
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>But who controls the controller? </p><p>(Andrew's answer: the one who lets himself be controlled.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	I've got a war in my mind

**Author's Note:**

> This was part of something else I was writing but it ended up not fitting with how it's going, but I liked it enough to make it its own thing.
> 
> Title is from a Lana Del Rey song (and yeah, Andrew and Fletcher would probably hate her music)
> 
> Warnings for: recreational drug use, offensive language, dubious consent (including both being in an altered state or expressing some dubious remarks), Fletcher's ambiguous motivations, and awful people being awful together.

Andrew wonders if Charlie Parker would have lived longer if Jo Jones were like Fletcher. Maybe he and Fletcher are Parker and Jones reincarnated — it’s sure poetic enough for the two of them. He almost tells this to Fletcher but Andrew already knows how Fletcher would react: he knows that Fletcher would just sigh deeply, like dealing with Andrew is the most taxing thing on the entire planet, no, the entire _universe_ , knows his exact motions and the facial expressions that’d line that weather worn bloodhound face of his. So he has no need to say it.

He eventually decides against it — that no, Charlie Parker probably would have died a lot sooner if Jo Jones were like Fletcher.

(It makes Andrew wonder if that’s where he’s headed.)

He’s ready to self-destruct at any given moment, passion and hatred and the sheer will of existence keeping alive, making him ache, killing him as each day progresses. The drugs help — he supposes that that’s creating another problem, but without them it’s a problem too — he’s just so fucking _dissatisfied_. Pills to sleep, pills to stay awake, pills to numb the pain that throbs in his fingers all the way up to his elbows. Pain that goes all the way up to his chest where it sits heavy, pain that when he concentrates on it, it’s hard to breathe and when he struggles tears well up and threaten to surge — at least until he makes it stop. It’s a semblance of life that he can control.

Not that Fletcher doesn't have anything to say about it. Of course the motherfucker tries to run his life for him, control-freak that he is. Fucking obsessed with him.

It both thrills and scares Andrew, but the thrill wins out and he gives in, so that he’s controlling that Fletcher gets to control him.

In his mind, it makes sense, this crazy power struggle.

So one night when they’re pouring over charts at Fletcher’s apartment, Andrew takes a break to the bathroom to swallow a few pills dry (with a quick glance at his reflection before he leaves: vacant, hardened, desperate) and slinks back into the living room, warm euphoria already setting in, and hangs onto the door frame, waiting.

Fletcher, seated on the couch with papers around him like a ring of salt made to entrap demons, looks up and sees Andrew’s glassy eyes and unbalanced stance, and then curses, “You’ve got to be fucking _kidding_ me.”

It’s easy, Andrew realizes, as long as he’s compliant and formable clay in Fletcher’s hands, and it’s even easier when he’s so misshapen and broken because it lets Fletcher form him into how he wants. Build him up anew. He allows himself to be this way because — who controls the controller?

(Andrew’s answer: the one who lets himself be controlled.)

Fletcher protests, at first, berating Andrew as Andrew unsteadily prowls across the room, “Higher than a fucking kite, wasting my goddamn time.” Fletcher continues to object as Andrew straddles him, facing him with a leg on either side of his lap, knees pressing into the couch cushions. “Fucking queer,” he says, pressing at Andrew’s chest as Andrew starts to rock his hips forward into his, his hands clutching at his shirt and balling fabric into his fists. “Have you lost your goddamn mind? You too brain damaged already?”

A moan escapes Andrew’s lips that are formed into a smile when he feels Fletcher’s cock hardening against him despite his protests; he’s got him.

“I swear to fucking god _stop_ , Neiman,” Fletcher growls, but he doesn’t try too hard — he gives a half-hearted attempt to buck Andrew off his lap, but Andrew shoves him back, hands splayed against his shoulders.

He continues to roll his hips and Fletcher is giving back some, now. Staring at him unblinking, he says, “You’re going to regret this.”

“I’ve got nothing else to loose,” Andrew breathes, and it’s true. “I’m still not good enough.”

Andrew can’t be sure, he could have hallucinated it, but Fletcher has a brief look that could almost be identified as _forlorn_ , and he reaches up and frames Andrew’s face between his hands, thumbs brushing against his jawline before pressing hard. “I’m not going to carry your junkie ass to the top,” he says.

Andrew wants to say, _No, it’ll be all on me, I’ll be the one to do it_ , but he can’t find the strength to do so.

 

 

He hopes Fletcher feels guilty — that’s Andrew’s second thought when he wakes up in Fletcher’s bed, naked and tangled up in sheets. When he turns over, he finds that the other side of the bed is empty, and his third thought is that he can’t decide if he is thankful or disappointed that he’s alone.

His first thought is that he needs his pills. Everything’s settling in and it’s choking him.

Too tired and sore to get out of bed, Andrew continues to lie there and is content to do so for the rest of the day, the rest of the week, the rest of the month, until his body decomposes. He’s dozing when he hears footfalls in the room, and he opens his eyes blearily to see Fletcher standing at the foot of the bed. Andrew would say he looks pissed off, but if he’s honest that’s his natural state of being.

“Get the fuck up, cocksucker,” Fletcher barks, and throws something at him. Andrew picks it up to see that it’s his clothes from last night, but freshly laundered. “Time to be useful.”

Obediently, Andrew begrudgingly swings his legs over the bed and steps into his boxers, and as he’s pulling his shirt over his head Fletcher tells him, “And don’t even think about looking for your pills. I flushed them.”

“I can just get more,” Andrew mumbles, yawning.

“Like fuck you will.” Fletcher crosses his arms. “I’m in control of this circus now.”

“Fuck you.”

 

 

It works for a while, a week tops. Fletcher keeps Andrew distracted — he’s too busy either drumming or fucking to think about much else.

But withdrawal bites at him, makes him sweat makes him shake makes him itch, and music burns his skin.

Since he always goes to the extreme with everything he does, he takes something more, to put a blanket on the rancor in his blood. Fletcher’s not pleased.

(Andrew might do it just to spite the bastard, but when he acknowledges it, he feels worse and waves the thought away.)

Andrew lies on Fletcher’s bed, his arms spread out besides him, palms downturned and skating against the cool sheets as he brings them above his head. “Everything’s great.” Everything _does_ feel great, the high surging through him, he swears he feels every single one of his nerve endings glittering, and he’s never been more carefree, hasn’t been this happy in a long time.

Fletcher’s eyes flit from his prone form on the bed to the zip-lock bag on the nightstand with contents strewn out — a needle, a wrap, a vial of liquid. It happens in a quick moment; Fletcher lunges across the room, grabbing the contents. Andrew tries to stop him but as soon as he sits up and shouts, “Hey!” the room spins and he flops back down onto the bed.

He’s vaguely aware of Fletcher trudging across the room and slamming the window open, tossing the bag out the open air before slamming the window shut again. He turns to Andrew and, “What the fuck is wrong with you?”

Andrew hums and considers his answer. _Nothing. Everything._

Fletcher ends up dragging Andrew to the shower, stripping him bare and shoving him in, cold water on blast in an attempt to sober him. Andrew shrinks away from the water, but Fletcher pushes him back under the stream. The water feels like icicles jabbing his skin, but in his peripheral Andrew catches the site of Fletcher standing in the shower next to him fully clothed, water splashing on him as Andrew squirms, and he laughs.

“You think this funny?” Fletcher yells over the sound of the water, “Please, tell me what about this is funny, because I’m at a loss for words.”

“Well, that’s a first.”

“Nobody asked you, you goddamn idiot!” His voice echoes in the shower, becoming a cacophony of surround sound. “You aren’t good enough to die yet,” he says, and Andrew is too stoned to really think about what that means.

 

 

(“You look like shit,” Fletcher says the next morning. Andrew doesn’t respond, but instead curls his body around his. He says, “Neiman, I swear to god I’m not into this faggy malarkey shit,” and tries to scoot away but Andrew holds him still, anchoring him down, until he stops moving and settles for calling him, “Needy bastard.” In an act of rebellion he puts his cold feet against Andrew’s.

Later, when Andrew is on his back and Fletcher is over him fucking him roughly, flushed and shaking as he grunts out Andrew’s name in syllables, _And-rew_ , Andrew realizes that he isn’t the only needy bastard. How covetous Fletcher is of Andrew, in every way.)

 

 

He doubts that Jo Jones ever did this for Charlie Parker:

It’s past three in the morning and Fletcher’s got Andrew on the bathroom floor with his chest at Andrew’s back and arms wrapped around him, one hand prying his jaw open and the other sticking his fingers down his throat to force him to throw up into the toilet.

(It is a blur for him, but Andrew knows that Fletcher found him listless in the recliner with an empty bottle next to him. With sheer annoyance had Fletcher prodded at him and called him some variation of a _talentless reject_ , but it wasn’t until he didn’t stir or respond that Fletcher had thought something could be wrong.

(He knows these things only because Fletcher had repeated them to him later, slow and unblinking. Andrew couldn’t look at him when he had said it.)

It wasn’t his intention to kill himself, he had just needed it to stop, needed to make it so he couldn’t feel that weighty feeling that settles around his chest, sinking its claws in.)

Andrew would try to struggle against his hold, but he’s too sluggish to do so; Fletcher’s presence behind him rings in his ears and Andrew shuts his eyes and he can feel himself slipping away, and he thinks how easy it would be to give in and that would be that.

He doesn’t though: he eventually vomits into the toilet, until bile burns his throat and tears prickle in the corners of his eyes. He’s never hated Fletcher more — now saving his life is added to the list of things of things he’s done to him. Brings him to his self-destruction, and plucking him from death.

When he’s done and gagging he wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. Fletcher sits back pulling Andrew between his legs, and Andrew doesn’t relent from him, and he leans into his chest. Andrew tries to steady his breathing, taking in deep shaking breaths that rattle in his bones.

Fletcher sets his chin on top of Andrew’s head, and when Fletcher speaks Andrew can feel the reverberations of his words. “You’re okay, dumbass,” Fletcher mutters, and a sob escapes Andrew and once he’s started he can’t stop and he turns and buries his face into the other’s black t-shirt and cries.

He’s not even really sure why he’s crying, anymore.

 

 

He must have fallen asleep at some point, because Andrew wakes up in Fletcher’s bed. He feels awful, his mouth tastes vile and his head is pounding. He shifts, turning on his side to see Fletcher fully clothed lying on top of the comforter next to him.

“Now is the time you stop this,” Fletcher says simply. Andrew imagines he sees a concentrated effort forcing him to be calm.

“But...” Andrew begins. “Things—”

“Let me break it down for you, because there’s no good excuse for you to be fucking up as majorly as you are: it’s either you clean up for me, or things will get much worse. Want me to tell your daddy and he can send you to rehab?” Fletcher props himself up with an elbow, and with the way the light from the window hits him, Andrew can see dark circles under his eyes, and he wonders if he stayed awake all night.

Fletcher continues, “There they’ll give you some comfy pajamas. You can have some roommates. Make friendship bracelets or whatever stupid shit they do at those places. You’d have more opportunities to get fucked in the ass, since now you know you like it so much. Group therapy sessions to talk about your sniveling-pansy feelings.” He pauses, and gestures with a hand in the air. “You want to go there instead?”

Andrew blanches, and then, “No, I don’t want that.” The thought is unbearable.

“Okay then. I’m not going to let you fuck this up.”

There’s a beat, then, “Because then you wouldn’t get what you want?” Andrew asks, his voice raspy. He doesn’t have to elaborate on what he means — if Andrew went and got himself killed, then Fletcher would lose his chance on grooming the Best Musician Ever to perfection. It almost makes him want to kill himself just so Fletcher would be robbed of it. Almost.

“This is about more than what you or I want,” Fletcher says, and then he sighs and rubs a hand over his face. Watching him, Andrew sees one of those rare moments when Fletcher seems a bit less striking — but only a bit.

Fletcher doesn’t say anything more to him, and Andrew is almost asleep, breath slow and steady, when he feels Fletcher place a hand on his chest. Andrew slides his eyes open to see Fletcher looking at him pensively — as though he’s doing it to make sure that he is still alive. Andrew would almost categorize this exchange as intimate concern but he knows that’s ridiculous. He knows that Fletcher doesn’t really care for his well-being, he just doesn’t want to lose an investment.

He’s fully committed to that thought, but when Fletcher puts his head against his and says quietly, “You’ll be fine, Andrew. Get some sleep,” he doesn’t know what’s legitimate and what’s manipulation, anymore. Maybe it’s because he’s gotten so good at it himself.

 

 

(As he goes on, there's one that question haunts him—

—is he rushing towards death, or dragging to get there?)

**Author's Note:**

> Yeahhhhh the drug addiction stuff comes from Chazelle's comments about Andrew probably dying from an OD in his 30s. Sad stuff. 
> 
> Thank you for reading, and feedback is always appreciated :D


End file.
